Ex-U.S. Senator Cannon Dies at 90

Published 8:00 pm, Tuesday, March 5, 2002

Howard Cannon, a World War II hero and later a powerful U.S. senator who was the target of a notorious bribery attempt, died Wednesday. He was 90.

Cannon had been in ill health in recent years and died of congestive heart failure at a hospice he had entered on Monday, a family spokesman said.

His two children were with him when he died, said Micki Flansburg, a friend of the family.

"It's a sad day for Nevada," Mayor Oscar Goodman said. "He represents the best in Nevada."

Cannon's life resulted in great progress for the state and nation, said Mike O'Callaghan, former two-term Nevada governor and Las Vegas Sun executive editor who worked for Cannon as a legislative aide.

"He lived the American dream and his work helped millions of others enjoy that same dream. Howard's life has been a full experience which resulted in great progress for our state and nation."

Cannon served as a high-profile senator and consultant in Washington from 1958 to 1995.

The four-term moderate Democratic senator and a retired major general in the Air Force Reserve lost his Senate seat in a 1982 upset. He had to fight mob shadows after then-Teamsters president Roy Lee Williams and four other men were accused of trying to bribe him. Cannon was not charged and testified at length in their trial just a month before the election.

Cannon served as a pilot during World War II, and got the Distinguished Flying Cross and other medals after his plane was shot down over the Netherlands. It took him 42 days to reach Allied lines.

After the war, he practiced law in Las Vegas and was elected city attorney in 1949. He squeaked through the Democratic primary for the Senate in 1958 and went on to easily defeat the incumbent Republican, George W. Malone.

In the 1964 election, he beat Republican Paul Laxalt by only 48 votes out of more than 134,000 votes cast, barely surviving an effort by GOP strategists to link him to Bobby Baker, the Senate secretary who had been caught up in a financial scandal.

Some voters in Nevada _ known as the "Mississippi of the West" at the time because of segregation policies _ also didn't like Cannon's vote to end a filibuster by Southern Democrats who tried unsuccessfully to block the historic Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Re-election bids in 1970 and 1976 were easy. But 1982 was a far different story: Cannon boasted at the start of the year that he could beat anyone, but he wound up losing to Republican Chic Hecht by 5,657 votes out of about 235,000 votes cast.

Cannon blamed the media for failing to "smoke out" the lackluster Hecht on campaign issues. But Cannon also had gone through a bloody primary battle and conceded he was hurt by the Teamster officials' bribery trial.

Cannon said his most significant accomplishment in the Senate was his role as Commerce Committee chairman in crafting legislation that deregulated the airline and trucking industries.

He also was a ranking member of the Armed Services and Rules committees.